‘Early Recovery framework’ for Pakistan’s Flood Victims

While the relief phase, stretched over six months, launched in areas ruined by 2011 floods has concluded, the Pakistani government in support with the United Nations has launched the $440 million ‘Early Recovery Framework’ for restoration of livelihoods, and support for food security, basic social services, shelter, community infrastructure, health, nutrition, water and sanitation.

Around 1.2 million victims of the devastating 2011 flood are now ready to return to their areas of origin as much of floodwater in the affected parts of Sindh and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan has receded.

The floods that set off early August 2011 affected over 5 million people, rendered 1.8 million homeless and destroyed standing crops over 2.2 million acres worth $2 billion.

The launch of early recovery phase is critical for these ready-to-return flood victims, for this will help them rebuild their communities and return to normal lives.

The Early Recovery Framework seeks a further US$439,813,059 million to fund a continuation of the 2011 Pakistan Floods Rapid Response Plan (RRP) until September 2012, and enable the humanitarian community to support the Pakistani government in dealing with the early recovery needs.

According to United Nation’s officials in Pakistan, since the launch of the RRP on September 18, 2011, over US$162 million have been pledged by the international donor community – 48 per cent of the US$ 357 million requested in the RRP for the 2011 floods.

The ‘Pakistan Floods 2011 Early Recovery Framework’ actually sketches out how the government in collaboration with the UN and its partners will support displaced communities by engaging in efficient planning and its implementation – with key focus on discovering solutions to lessen impacts of last year’s flood and help communities to quickly rebuild their lives in their own areas and build their climate resilience.

The recovery framework stresses upon linking the early recovery to development in order to provide all-out support through an early recovery response (ERR), which includes a strong disaster risk reduction (DRR) component, through the restoration of livelihoods, support for food security, the restoration of basic social services (health, education and protection, WASH, nutrition, shelter and community infrastructure through participatory community-based approaches.

In fact, the ‘Early Recovery Framework’ provides the foundation and structure for the ERR, supporting the 2011 flood victims in Sindh and Balochistan.

The framework has also drawn up mechanism to monitor the early recovery response. As per the mechanism, the ERR will be monitored through the Inter-Cluster Coordination Mechanism (ICCM).

According to the ‘Early Recovery Framework’ document, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) cluster in flood-hit areas remained severely under-addressed or under-responded, which received around $13,564,150 (20%) against total requirement of $68,070,486.

Some 1,766,468 people received clean drinking water, over 695,718 people were provided with sanitation facilities, hygiene sessions were held for 1,919,590 people for safe sanitation practices and hygiene kits were distributed among 1,925,806.

Food security cluster received the highest funding of $92,066,223 (53%) against requirement of $173,940,784 followed by shelter $31,840,407 (48%) against requirement of $66,452,014; health $20,673,742 (45) against requirement of $45,911,379.

Earlier, adviser to the Pakistan’s Prime Minister on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, told the launching ceremony held in Islamabad on February 21 that the government lauds unfailing support and assistance of international community to the people of Pakistan through these hard times.

“It is heartening to see that the United Nations agencies, foreign governments, donors, national and international NGOs and private philanthropy have worked tirelessly in close coordination with the national and provincial disaster management authorities and other relevant government agencies for responding to immense needs of the displaced people in the flood-hit areas of Pakistan,” he said.

“It is critical that the international community supports this effort to make communities safer, more resilient, and better prepared in the event of possible future flooding and other disasters. Further funding is critical as people are still at risk, particularly at a time when they [people] have moved home and crucial early recovery activities are direly needed to help them rebuild lives,” he said.

Perhaps a study of how different communities (north to south ) in Pakistan act after disasters would be useful in formulating policy. Current approach seems to be to provide hand-outs instead of engaging the communities hence making them THE stakeholder of note in re-building whilst government can address the wider issue of how to prevent certain disasters from repeating year-on-year.

Instead of creating ‘beggars’, disasters can be an opportunity to bind communities together by engaging and emphasising self-reliance. For that the government has to stop seeing it as an opportunity to emotionally blackmail potential donors to fund fiscal deficits whenever a disaster occurs. Just consider what funds came in after 2005 earthquake and whether these funds have been spent even with 30% efficiency….and tat was a time before international economic crunch.